The genealogical ramblings of Brandt Gibson as he researches his family history.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wisdom Wednesday - When it rains, it REALLY rains

Obituary for Augusta (Joseph) Gibson

I have had a crazy week in genealogy research, and it's only Wednesday! Here's a quick summary of what's come my way since Sunday:

1. My sister was contacted by a relative named Delores on our Bergstad side, and passed her name and number on to me. I called Delores last Sunday and talked to her for over an hour, and found out she is my first cousin twice removed, and she has a lot of info on the Bergstads I didn't, including pictures!! I still need to sit down and really sift through the notes I took while talking to her.

2. While going through my Joseph family files, I noticed I was missing obituaries from a lot of people. I got the feeling I might be able to find some of these on my own, so I went to Newspaper Archive, and looked for the edition of the local paper for their localities (Butte, Anaconda, and Helena) that came out the day after they died. Instead of relying on the indexes, I actually read through the paper quickly (first time that I've done it this way). In just an hour or two, I had obituaries for my 2nd-great-grandaunt Tina (Joseph) Leistiko, my great-grandmother Augusta (Joseph) Gibson, and my great-great-grandmother Catherine (Cain) Gibson. The one for Catherine was really hard to see, but I was able to read most of it. But it just amazed me how quickly I found these, and the details and info about each person were priceless.

Obituary for
Christine (Joseph) Leistiko

3. My grandmother made a huge breakthrough on our mysterious American Indian ancestor Lisette Rainier, by finding out a relative (son or brother are the most likely relationships) of Lisette's named Joseph Rainier bought some land in Montana in 1904. His last name is spelled Reynier in the land record. I'm still trying to find him in the 1900 and 1910 censuses, but no luck so far. The only other records I have on him are a mention in the journal of Lisette's husband Thomas W. Harris, and the 1860 census where he and Charles Rainier are listed as living with Thomas and Lisette. Nothing else is known about him, so the land record is huge!

4. Upon hearing about Joseph Rainier's land purchase, I went to the BLM GLO website (which I admittedly haven't used much at all till now) and starting poking around, searching for ancestors in different parts of the country. In just a few minutes, I had copies of patents from several ancestors! So far I've found patents and other records for Alexander B. Shute, Thomas W. Harris, James E. Craddock, Knut J. Bergstad, Turby (Bergstad) Cornell, and the previously-mentioned Joseph Rainier. And that was just the ones I found on random searches. Can't wait to see what a thorough search will reveal!

5. Last night, I came across a link for Black Sea German Research group. These wonderful people have gone through German Lutheran church records for the Trinity German Lutheran Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, indexed them, and linked the people together in family groups. Trinity church was associated with Christ Lutheran Church, also in Manitoba, where many of my Joseph relatives lived. I did a search for the surname Joseph, and came back with 43 hits, many of whom I recognized as my relatives right off. I sent away for those church records last night, and am waiting anxiously to hear back on them.

Land patent for Alexander Blood Shute

6. Found out that RootsTech 2012 (which takes place next weekend) has an official app for smartphones. It has a photo gallery, speaker bios, conference documents, videos, a link to Twitter that pulls up all entries marked with the #rootstech hashtag, and more. This year I'm hoping to follow RootsTech much more closely, even though I can't attend in person, and this app looks like it will let me do just that.

The only downside to all of this genealogical goodness is that I have a ProGen assignment due next week, and I'm trying to finish that, and keep up with all the stuff I keep finding. I mean, once I find a little something on one of my lines, I can't help but dig and keep digging until I find everything I can. But I have literally been overwhelmed with everything that has come my way this week. I almost wish I had an assistant or something just to help with the filing and organizing. :) But it's a happy problem, one I will never seriously complain about. Just hope I can document everything before I lose track of where I found it.